Ep 14: May 1-10 2025 Guelph real estate sales

Today Ryan discusses the first 10 days of May in Guelph real estate, along with an overview of the Jan- April period.

Overall the market is cautious, with sales below annual averages for the same periods. 

Sales of detached homes between $800-$1M seem to be moving very quickly, while some buyers are taking advantage of slower sales above $1M.

You can always get touch with Beth and Ryan Waller on their website

Transcript

Welcome to the Guelph Real Estate Report podcast with your host and Guelph realtor, Ryan Waller. This podcast is designed to provide information for those buying and selling homes in the Guelph area to make the process more informative, fun, and a little less stressful. Now on with the show. Hey everyone! Welcome back to episode 14 of the Guelph Real Estate Report podcast. My name is Ryan Waller and I work in the Guelph real estate market with my wife, Beth. Today we're going to take a look at the period of May 1st to May 10th. To get an idea of how the busiest month in Guelph real estate is starting off. The market from January until April is a slow build, and if you can visualize it, it's almost like a an arc upwards and it starts off pretty slow with low transaction volume in January and February is a little bit better than January. March is a little bit better than February, and April is better than March. As we get into May and June, it hits the peak and levels off. And then after June, starting in July, it typically begins a downward trend into Christmas. And of course, there are blips here and there, anomalies here and there that change that trajectory. But generally it follows that path where we hit a peak in May, June before it comes down again. Leading into May. We obviously just finished April, which was the start of the Guelph Real Estate spring market. It was a bit disappointing, and although April was the biggest volume month so far this year, it was still below previous April sales volumes. In fact, besides April of Covid, which was the first full month during the pandemic. April 2025 was the lowest volume month we've seen in a long time, and low volume, as I've said previously, doesn't necessarily mean low prices. Low volume means that buyers and sellers weren't coming together on transactions, and that has been the story with the real estate market this year. If you had to sum up Guelph real estate, it's been generally low volume. And it is because if you think about it, buyers are reading the headlines. Buyers are nervous with all the tariff talk. There were many buyers thinking that now isn't the time to make a move because maybe their job is at risk. Maybe there's uncertainty in the economy and as a result, buyers sat on the sidelines and waited for things to happen. Or they waited until what they perceived to be a good deal on a property that maybe they were looking at. Sellers, on the other hand, didn't want to hear anything about that news and continued to list their houses at what they thought were suitable prices and buyers didn't agree. And so the gap between buyers and sellers widened, and there was less activity that happened as a whole. And obviously with less activity, less people buying, less people selling at the prices that they wanted. Nothing happened. And it happened again in April. Sales volume, as mentioned, were down. They were just over five sales per day, which for April is a light number. That is the overall average for the full year, but usually April, May and June, which make up about 35 to 40% of the total annual sales, see a larger number than five. So it was a disappointment for sure, but it just goes on to tell the story of cautious buyers, stubborn sellers. When you get into May, the first ten days of May have put us at about six sales per day on average. If you look back at previous May's, you'll see that this number is in line with what you'd expect to see in a typical May. Last year was 6.1 sales per day. We hovered in the sixes for a number of years, with the exception, I think, of 2021. That was at nine per day. Six sales per day in the month of May. Is an okay month? It is nothing unusual. There's no big volume. But what we are seeing in May is a different pattern than we've seen in previous months. Previous months we've been trending below historical numbers. And, um, this May, we're seeing it at the historical numbers. So there has been a little bit of an improvement. It makes sense. Interest rates have been coming down. The news has settled a little bit on these trade wars, and the economy is getting to be a little more stable, although we are starting to see some cracks in southern Ontario, uh, in the automotive industry. What we are starting to notice, and I don't think it's by design. I think it's just more that it feels right. Um, but we are starting to see a lot of buyers doing the upsize move, and this is selling in a price range that's really moving 8 to 900,000 and moving to the next phase. And that often would be something substantially different because they're moving to upsize. It is usually a home above $1 million. It's usually much larger in square footage. And they're moving from a smaller segment, a smaller house at 8 to 900,000 and moving up into this larger segment of over a million. As always, as Guelph real estate agents you can find us on our website or book an appointment online